Posted by Davin Flateau on 30 Jan 2006 at 5:59 pm.
Filed under General, Astronomy.
As the New Horizons probe launched last week hurtles toward it’s 2015 flyby of Pluto, it’s cosmic serendipity that we celebrate the centennial of the planet’s discoverer, Kansan Clyde Tombaugh. He will be honored at 8pm this Saturday, February 4 in KU’s Alderson Auditorium. Special guest speaker and New Horizon’s Principal Investigator Alan Stern will speak at 8pm, followed by star viewing on the hill near Memorial Stadium, weather permitting.
Tombaugh discovered the 9th planet of the solar system on February 18, 1930 from his post at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Hired as a talented 23 year old amateur astronomer with no formal training, he was hired by Lowell Observatory to search for the mysterious “Planet X” that was theorized to be in the outer solar system.
Although born in Illinois, he spent his high school years living on his family farm near Burdett, Kansas. It was there where he picked up the astronomy bug from his father. Tombaugh hand made a 9-inch telescope from old tractor parts, and used it to make detailed drawings of the planets, which got him the job in Flagstaff. The search for a ninth planet began at the observatory 24 years earlier, but it took Tombaugh less than a year to find the tiny enigmatic planet, taking the pictures revealing its existence just days before his 24th birthday.
Tombaugh went to the University of Kansas to get his bachelor’s degree in astronomy two years after he made one of the most important astronomy discoveries of the century. After getting his masters degree at KU, he had a long research and teaching career, discovering a comet, open star clusters, and even a supercluster of galaxies.
Clyde Tombaugh died on January 17, 1997 just shy of his 91st birthday.
Zaika on 15 Feb 2006 at 3:29 pm: 1
Hi!